Saturday, May 29, 2010

8th state to feds: Step away from our guns Alaska governor signs Firearms Freedom Act into law

Posted: May 28, 2010
12:45 am Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily



The federal government has called the move reason in and of itself for federal courts to strike down the state laws that now have been adopted in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee and Arizona.

In its court filings in Montana – the first state to adopt such provisions and the site of a court battle over its validity – the federal government has argued that since eight states have enacted their own firearms regulations and another 21 are considering similar plans, that "would have an indisputable effect on interstate commerce."

The brief, posted on the Firearms Freedom Act website, said the Commerce Clause of the Constitution should be the foundation for the court ruling, even though supporters of the states' rights movement have noted that the Second Amendment and Tenth Amendment were adopted later, and presumably could be read to have modified the Commerce Clause.


Montana statehouse

Lawmakers in Montana who voted for the original plan have argued in the court case, "There is nothing in the MFFA that should offend the powers of the national government."

And they contend the Constitution's supremacy clause has no impact because "only laws made in pursuance of the Constitution constitute the supreme law of the land."

Montana's original plan is called "An Act exempting from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured and retained in Montana."

The law cites the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time it was admitted to statehood in 1889.

Lawmakers in Montana actually took the dispute to the feds. They argued, "Should Congress enact a law that appears to conflict with the guidance in the [Montana Firearms Freedom Act], the courts may then determine whether Congress has acted within the scope of its delegated powers as limited by later amendments. … The courts may then determine the extent to which Congress' enactment has abrogated the state's exercise of power within the same sphere."

The lawsuit was brought against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Montana Shooting Sports Association in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.

It seeks a declaration that the federal government must stay out of the way of Montana's management of its own firearms.

According to the Firearms Freedom Act website, such laws are "primarily a Tenth Amendment challenge to the powers of Congress under the 'commerce clause,' with firearms as the object – it is a states' rights exercise."

When South Dakota's law was signed by Gov. Mike Rounds, a commentator said it addresses the "rights of states which have been carelessly trampled by the federal government for decades."

Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center said Washington likely is looking for a way out of the dispute.

"I think they're going to let it ride, hoping some judge throws out the case," he told WND earlier. "When they really start paying attention is when people actually start following the [state] firearms laws."

WND reported when Wyoming joined the states with self-declared exemptions from federal gun regulation. Officials there took the unusual step of including penalties for any agent of the U.S. who "enforces or attempts to enforce" federal gun rules on a "personal firearm."

The costs could be up to two years in prison and $2,000 in fines for an offender.


Thursday, May 27, 2010

Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as 'Legitimate Tenet of Islam

The president's top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a "legitimate tenet of Islam," arguing that the term "jihadists" should not be used to describe America's enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of "political, economic and social forces," but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in "religious terms."

He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in it. But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be applied either.

"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children," Brennan said.

The technical, broadest definition of jihad is a "struggle" in the name of Islam and the term does not connote "holy war" for all Muslims. However, jihad frequently connotes images of military combat or warfare, and some of the world's most wanted terrorists including Usama bin Laden commonly use the word to call for war against the West.

Brennan defined the enemy as members of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and "its terrorist affiliates."

But Brennan argued that it would be "counterproductive" for the United States to use the term, as it would "play into the false perception" that the "murderers" leading war against the West are doing so in the name of a "holy cause."

"Moreover, describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism -- that the United States is somehow at war against Islam," he said.

The comment comes after Brennan, in a February speech in which he described his respect for the tolerance and devotion of Middle Eastern nations, referred to Jerusalem on first reference by its Arabic name, Al-Quds.

"In all my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together," Brennan said at an event co-sponsored by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the Islamic Center at New York University and the Islamic Law Students Association at NYU.

Document says number of attempted attacks on U.S. is at all-time high

From Carol Cratty, CNN
May 27, 2010 1:38 a.m. EDT
t1larg.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • DHS memo says number and pace of attempted attacks have surpassed "any other previous one-year period"
  • Attacks are expected to be attempted with "increased frequency," document warns
  • Report cites recent cases of homegrown terrorism, including failed Times Square bombing
  • Terror groups are increasingly using westerners as operatives, report says

Washington (CNN) -- Just weeks after the failed car bombing of New York's Times Square, the Department of Homeland Security says "the number and pace of attempted attacks against the United States over the past nine months have surpassed the number of attempts during any other previous one-year period."

That grim assessment is contained in an unclassified DHS intelligence memo prepared for various law enforcement groups, which says terror groups are expected to try attacks inside the United States with "increased frequency."

CNN obtained a copy of the document, dated May 21, which goes on to warn, "we have to operate under the premise that other operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning."

The intelligence note says recent attempted terror attacks have used operatives and tactics which made the plots hard to detect.

The document specifically mentions the cases of Afghan national Najibullah Zazi, who pleaded guilty in February to plotting attacks on New York's subways, and Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American.

The intelligence report says both men spent significant time in the United States and were familiar with their alleged targets. Furthermore, the plots involved materials that can be commonly purchased in America without causing suspicion.

The document also says Shahzad and Zazi had short periods of training overseas "compared to lengthier training cycles for earlier operations, reducing our ability to detect their activities."

The report say U.S. officials "lack insights in specific details, timing and intended targets," but trends indicate terrorists are looking for "smaller, more achievable attacks against easily accessible targets."

The report mentions both al Qaeda and associated groups such as the Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan, which is known as the TTP.

The intelligence document also says terror groups increasingly are using westerners as operatives or in leadership positions in which they make public statements calling for Muslims to strike the United States. The document cites as examples Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Alawki and al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn.

The report also mentions Omar Hammami, who grew up in Alabama and is now believed to be an operative with al-Shabaab in Somalia. Although al-Shabaab has not executed attacks in the United States, law enforcement officials have expressed concern that Somali-Americans who have gone to Somalia to train and fight could return to the United States and commit acts of terrorism.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Why Glenn Beck isn't crazy

Posted: May 26, 2010
9:16 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

NEW YORK – For the past year, Fox News host Glenn Beck has used his mega-platform to warn President Obama is deeply tied to and backed by a fringe, anti-American extremist nexus.

For his groundbreaking work, Beck has been called a liar, conspiracy theorist, fear-monger, hater, racist and even just plain nuts.

I defy those who doubt Beck's central thesis to read my new book, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's ties to communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists."

The hot new best-seller, "The Manchurian President," by Aaron Klein reveals inside story on Team Obama and its members. Now available autographed at WND's Superstore!

With nearly 900 footnotes, "The Manchurian President" proves in black and white that Beck has been right all along.

(Column continues below)



The work, a culmination of two years of extensive research by me and co-author Brenda J. Elliott, documents Obama not only was mentored by extremists but that many of those same anti-American activists are currently inside the White House or helping from the outside to craft key legislation that seeks to transform the U.S.

Among the many finds of "The Manchurian President:"

  • A coalition of extremists, including a founder of William Ayers' Weathermen domestic terrorist organization, helped craft Obama's "stimulus" bill.

  • Obama's health-care policy, masked by moderate populist rhetoric, was pushed along and partially crafted by extremists, some of whom reveal in their own words that their principal aim is to achieve corporate socialist goals and a vast increase in government powers.

  • Extremists are among Obama's "czars" and other top advisers. New information links top advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett to communist activists. The book uncovers correspondence in which a communist confesses to mentoring and educating Axelrod and helping the top Obama aide to secure his first job. Obama then later worked with the same communist, the book finds.

  • Evidence shows in 1995 Obama was a member of the socialist New Party, which sought to infiltrate the Democratic Party to ultimately mold it into a socialist-leaning organization. Perhaps more startlingly, the book reveals how New Party founders are currently helping to craft White House legislation.

  • Copious research reveals more about Obama's deep ties to Ayers, uncovering for the first time where and how Obama first met Ayers – and it is much earlier than previously believed.

  • Important aspects of Obama's carefully covered-up college years, with new details of his student career at Occidental College and later at Columbia University are revealed.

  • Obama's early years, including his previously overlooked early-childhood ties to a radical, far-left church are documented.

  • Obama's associations with the Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and black political extremists are also revealed, with extensive new information on the subjects.

  • Obama's deep ties to ACORN, which are much more extensive than previously documented elsewhere are covered. The book also crucially describes how a socialist-led, ACORN-affiliated union helped facilitate Obama's political career and now exerts major influence in the White House.

I believe this book is crucial to Americans from across the political spectrum, including mainstream Democrats who should be alarmed that their party has been hijacked by an extreme-left fringe bent on permanently changing the party to fit its radical agenda.

Meanwhile, those who criticized Beck for his arguments owe the television and radio personality a profound apology.


Related offer:

Get Aaron Klein's new bestseller, "The Manchurian President," at WND's Superstore!

You are kidding me: 7 hours of data lost before rig went down in the gulf

A "black box" can reveal why an airplane crashed or how fast a car was going in the instant before an accident. Yet there are no records of a critical safety test supposedly performed during the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

They went down with the rig.

While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the April 20 blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its data are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion.

The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made — and what warnings might have been ignored? Earlier tests, which suggested that explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well, were preserved.

"There is some delay in the replication of our data, so our operational data, our sequence of events ends at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the 20th," Steven Newman, president and CEO of Transocean Ltd, told a Senate panel. The rig blew up at 10 p.m., killing 11 workers and unleashing a gusher that has spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents several rig workers involved in the accident, questioned whether what he called "the phantom test" was even performed.



"I can just tell you that the Halliburton hands were scratching their heads," said Buzbee, whose clients include one of the Halliburton crew members responsible for cementing the well to prepare for moving the drilling rig to another site.

Buzbee said that when Halliburton showed BP PLC and Transocean officials the results of the pressure tests that suggested gas was leaking, the rig workers were put on "standby." BP is the rig operator and leaseholder.

Buzbee said one of his clients told him the "Transocean and BP company people got their heads together," and 40 minutes later gave the green light.

The attorney said the Halliburton crew members were not shown any new test results.

"They said they did their own tests, and they came out OK," he said. "But with the phantom test that Transocean and BP allegedly did, there was no real record or real-time recordation of that test."

Buzbee suggested that BP and Transocean had monetary reasons for ignoring the earlier tests.

"The facts are as they are," he said. "The rig is $500,000 a day. There are bonuses for finishing early."

None of the three companies would comment Thursday on whether any data or test results were purposely not sent to shore, or on exactly who made the final decision to continue the operations that day.

Meanwhile, out in the Gulf, BP settled on its next attempt to cut down on the spill: Undersea robots will try to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that's leaking on the sea floor. The tube, which will suck crude to a ship on the surface, will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the water.

BP said it wasn't sure how much of the roughly 210,000 gallons leaking daily would be captured by the improvised device.

If that doesn't work, engineers can still attempt to use a "top hat" box now on the sea floor to cover the leak and siphon the oil to the surface. They also might plug the leak with golf balls and other debris — a "junk shot."

Details of a likely blowout scenario emerged this week for the first time from congressional and administrative hearings. They suggest there were both crew mistakes and equipment breakdowns at key points the day of the explosion.

Rigs like Deepwater Horizon keep a daily drilling report. It is the version of that report given to Congress that cuts off at 3 p.m.

The log confirms that three pressure tests, conducted from the morning to the early afternoon of April 20, indicated unseen underground leakage into the well. But there is no mention of a fourth test that BP and Transocean say was conducted and that they say indicated it was safe to proceed.

In the hours leading up to the explosion, workers finished pumping cement into the exploratory well to bolster and seal it against leaks until a later production phase. After the tests that indicated leakage, workers debated the next step and eventually decided to resume work, for reasons that remain unclear.

At the same time, heavy drilling fluid — or mud — was being pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead, further whittling the well's defenses. It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for dropping a final blob of cement into the well as a temporary plug for the pipe.

When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer. However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part.

Problems with the blowout preventer might have been a moot issue had someone not decided to continue offloading the drilling mud.

Newman, the Transocean CEO, told legislators that alarms are monitored on the rig through a vessel management system, or VMS. But he said such records were not transmitted to shore.

"And so the VMS system, along with the logs of the VMS system, would have gone down with the vessel," he said.

"So you have no mirrored backup data device so that that information is recorded at some other location than on the rig itself?" asked an incredulous Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa.

"We do not have real-time off-rig monitoring of what's going on on the vessel," Newman replied.

Part of Halliburton's contract on the Deepwater Horizon was to provide real-time data to officials on shore. That company was able to produce a chart showing events up to two minutes before the explosion. But that document would not be expected to show the key test results.

The chart indicated that shortly before 10 p.m., pressure in the standpipe increased sevenfold to 3,500 pounds per square inch. Halliburton had essentially two minutes' notice that something had gone horribly wrong.

Halliburton monitors temperatures and pressure in offshore wells through sensitive sensors and instruments often capable of transmitting data in real time to officials on the rig and on shore, said Jack Madeley, a consulting safety engineer in College Station, Texas.

"Operators like BP use that information to make sure the well is in the right location," said Madeley, who specializes in forensic investigations of rig accidents. "They need that to make sure the overall procedures for getting it cemented and getting the well secured before they pull the string out and plug up the well are done."

The data help BP and other well operators make crucial decisions about the formations where they are drilling, but it is not always streamed to shore minute by minute, he said.

Rep. Braley said the lack of offsite data storage is something he intends to look into further.

"I'm sure we'll be taking action to follow up with those requirements," he said. "Because it's critical information that would give rise to understanding of what happened and why more wasn't done to shut off the flow of oil and prevent this from happening."

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Donn in Boston, Chris Kahn in New York, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, Garance Burke in Fresno, Calif., and Fred Frommer in Washington also contributed to this report.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Why are we not connecting the dots on The BP oil rig question? What was the real cause?

Update added 5-26-2010 Taken from the AP wire service: Just when you thought I was the crazy one! Read the update below and tell me something is not wrong with single bullet theory. The next thing you know is Arlan Specter will be running the investigation.

A "black box" can reveal why an airplane crashed or how fast a car was going in the instant before an accident. Yet there are no records of a critical safety test supposedly performed during the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

They went down with the rig.

While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the April 20 blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its data are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion.

The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made — and what warnings might have been ignored? Earlier tests, which suggested that explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well, were preserved.

"There is some delay in the replication of our data, so our operational data, our sequence of events ends at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the 20th," Steven Newman, president and CEO of Transocean Ltd, told a Senate panel. The rig blew up at 10 p.m., killing 11 workers and unleashing a gusher that has spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents several rig workers involved in the accident, questioned whether what he called "the phantom test" was even performed.

________________________________________________________________


The question is why? Why did this happen? This BP rig was built to deal with multiple problems presented as possible causes for this disaster. There are safe guards built in with these rigs,so that this very thing will not happen.

So why is not sabotage or terrorism not on the table as a possible cause? North Korea and Iran and many rogue states have subs capable of taking out the rig. Could a small plane have been used to crash into the rig? Could well places demolition charges taken the rig down so fast? This could effect 10 of millions of Americans,and cripple our ability to provide domestic oil drilling off shore. Who does this benefit,if gas prices in the US go to $6.00 a gallon?

The think tank question that should be asked here, is who benefits most from this disaster, and are they capable of taking out this rig?

Remember this happens 1 day before EARTH DAY 2010, and just hours after many high level oil executives were on the rig celebrating its 7 year safety record?

I wonder if it would have looked more like terrorism if the rig blow up while all those oil executives were on the rig? There are no consistences in life. Who is not connecting the dots on this one and why?

_________________________________________________________________

COVINGTON, La. – Oil giant BP is focused on two key areas around the blown wellhead as it probes the cause of the unchecked Gulf of Mexico oil spill and has started to brief federal authorities on its internal investigation.

BP PLC said in a release late Monday that its probe has not reached a final conclusion. But it said multiple control mechanisms should have prevented the accident that started with an oil rig explosion April 20 off the coast of Louisiana.

The largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf listed seven mechanisms where its hunt for a cause is focused. Four of those involve the blowout preventer, a massive piece of machinery that sits atop the wellhead and is supposed to act as a safety device of last resort. The other three areas of investigation involve the cementing and casing of the wellhead.

Three companies worked for BP on the well: Transocean LTD owned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the blowout preventer; Halliburton Inc. was responsible for encasing the well in cement; and Cameron International Corp. manufactured the blowout preventer.

President Barack Obama has blasted executives from the companies for blaming each other during Congressional hearings this month.

In BP's release, Chief Executive Tony Hayward stopped short of assigning responsibility, calling the disaster "a complex accident, caused by an unprecedented combination of failures."

"A number of companies are involved, including BP, and it is simply too early — and not up to us — to say who is at fault," Hayward said.

BP said its investigation team has begun sharing its findings with the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure as frustrations build with the failure to cap the well. Millions of gallons of oil stretch across a 150-mile swath from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La., endangering wildlife and livelihoods in commercial fishing and tourism.

BP said there was still extensive work to do in its investigation, including examining major pieces of equipment like the blowout preventer and the rig that are still on the seafloor.

The internal investigation started the day after the rig exploded, burned and sank. It is being conducted by BP's Head of Group Safety and Operations, who has an independent reporting line to Hayward, the company said.

In Washington, a report by the Interior Department's inspector general found ethics violations at the agency that overseas offshore drilling. The report , which follows up on a 2007 investigation, found that staffers at the Minerals Management Service accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the findings were "deeply disturbing" and showed the importance of his plan to abolish the agency and replace it with three new entities.

The report, which follows up on a 2007 investigation, found that MMS staffers accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography.

Salazar said several employees in the report have resigned, were fired, terminated or referred for prosecution. All the violations mentioned in the report occurred between 2000 and 2008.

After butting heads with BP over its use of a chemical to break up the oil in the water, the Obama administration said Tuesday the company is complying with the government's request to use less of the toxic dispersant.

White House energy adviser Carol Browner said alternative dispersants aren't so readily available.

In a letter to BP last week, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the company three days to find a less toxic alternative to the dispersant it's using, Corexit 9500. But in a series of meetings that followed, Browner said, it became clear the alternatives were not as widely available as needed.

"There are not as many being manufactured as people thought in the quantities" needed, Browner said in a round of television appearances on morning news shows.

"We need to determine whether or not those alternatives are available, and the EPA is doing that, but in the meantime, EPA has directed BP to use less of the dispersants and they're required to follow that," Browner said.

A memorial service was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Jackson, Miss., for the 11 workers who were killed when the oil rig exploded. The event was being held by Transocean.

All of BP's attempts to stop the leak have failed, despite the oil giant's use of joystick-operated submarine robots that can operate at depths no human could withstand.

BP is pinning its hopes of stopping the gusher on yet another technique never tested 5,000 feet underwater: a "top kill," in which heavy mud and cement would be shot into the well to plug it up. The process could begin as early as Wednesday, with BP giving it a 60 to 70 percent chance of success.

BP had hoped to try a top kill earlier but needed more time to get equipment into place and test it. The methodl has worked on aboveground oil wells in Kuwait and Iraq but has never before been attempted so far underwater.

Engineers are working on several other backup plans in case the top kill doesn't work, including injecting assorted junk into the well to clog it up, and lowering a new blowout preventer on top of the one that failed.

The only certain permanent solution is a pair of relief wells crews have already started drilling, but the task could take at least two months.

___

Associated Press Writers Erica Werner and Matthew Daly in Washington and Kevin McGill and Alan Sayre in Louisiana contributed to this report.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Obama as Superman and the pool dancing Miss USA,



Well these three pictures about sum the whole thing up.

You have a President who thinks he a super hero.

You have a Prime Minster and former President of Russia and Ex- KGB Col. who thinks he Fabio.

You have a pool dancing Miss USA who is a Muslim half the time and a Christian the other half of the time.




Riddle me this Batman, who do you think is more confused? The 50 + year old men with man boobs that they seem proud of,or the Young Muslim who thinks she's a Christian but pool dances but only for good causes?









That's a really nice horse you have there fellow,mind if I pet him?













U.S. backs South Korea in punishing North Plan military display of force in peninsula 'to deter future aggression'

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea won U.S. support Monday for slashing trade to North Korea and vowed to haul its communist neighbor before the U.N. Security Council for a torpedo attack that sank a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he expects the Security Council to take action against North Korea, calling the evidence that the North was responsible "overwhelming and deeply troubling."

The U.S. and South Korea are planning two major military exercises off the Korean Peninsula in a display of force intended "to deter future aggression" by North Korea, the White House said.

Story continues below ↓
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President Lee Myung-bak laid out the economic and diplomatic measures aimed at striking back at the impoverished North, including halting some trade and taking the regime before the Security Council.

International investigators concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore apart the warship Cheonan on March 26 in the Yellow Sea off the west coast in one of South Korea's worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Lee said it was another example of "incessant" provocation by North Korea, including a 1983 attack in Myanmar on a South Korean presidential delegation that killed 21 people, and the bombing of an airliner in 1987 that claimed 115 lives.

"We have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula," Lee said in a solemn speech at the War Memorial.

"But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," he said, calling it a "critical turning point" on the tense Korean peninsula, still technically in a state of war because the fighting ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

Big trading partner
The truce prohibits South Korea from waging a unilateral military attack, so Seoul sought to strike at Pyongyang's faltering economy.

Despite their rivalry, South Korea has been Pyongyang's No. 2 trading partner with $1.68 billion in trade in 2009, or about 33 percent of the North's total, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. China is North Korea's biggest trading partner, with $2.68 billion in commerce last year, the agency said.

South Korea buys shellfish, seafood products, zinc, sand, coal and other products from the North, but those imports will be halted, and North Korean cargo ships will be denied permission to pass through South Korean waters, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said.

Those measures will cost North Korea about $200 million a year, said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Kyungnam University.

But the biggest source of trade — a joint factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong where 110 South Korean firms employ about 42,000 North Koreans — will stay open, Hyun said.

The Obama administration endorsed Lee's demand that "North Korea immediately apologize and punish those responsible for the attack, and, most importantly, stop its belligerent and threatening behavior." Seoul can continue to count on the full backing of the United States, it said.

"U.S. support for South Korea's defense is unequivocal, and the president has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression," the White House said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman did not give a date for the exercises but said they will be in the "near future."

The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea — a major sore point for the North — as well as 47,000 troops in Japan.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Beijing conferring with China on a coordinated response. She would not say whether that might include new international sanctions against the North.

"We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation," Clinton said. "This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region."

'All-out war'
North Korea has steadfastly denied any role in the ship's sinking. On May 20, naval spokesman Col. Pak In Ho told broadcaster APTN in Pyongyang that any punishment would mean "all-out war."

On Monday, the powerful National Defense Commission criticized Lee's speech as a "clumsy farce," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.

At the U.N., Ban — a former South Korean foreign minister — said he shares in the international outrage over the sinking of the Cheonan.

"The evidence laid out in the joint international investigation report is overwhelming and deeply troubling. I fully share the widespread condemnation of the incident," Ban told reporters. "I am confident that the council ... will take measures appropriate to the gravity of the situation."

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. have been trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons in talks that Pyongyang quit last year, and Ban said it was "particularly deplorable" the attack occurred while those negotiations are stalled.

Pyongyang disputes the maritime border drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the war, and the Koreas have fought three skirmishes there, most recently in November.

South Korea's military will resume blaring anti-North Korean propaganda back over the border, a sensitive practice suspended in 2004 amid warming ties.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama suggested the heightened tension between the Koreas helped shape his decision to break a campaign promise and keep a key U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, where about half the U.S. troops are stationed.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Foreign 'terrorists' breach U.S. border Illegals coming from Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen

Posted: May 20, 2010
10:55 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Almost nine years after terrorists murdered 2,751 people on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. is still facing a major threat as hundreds of illegal aliens from countries known to support and sponsor terrorism sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border.


U.S. Mexico border in New Mexico. Only a small strand of barbed wire separates the two countries. (photo: 2006 congressional report)

'Special-interest countries' and 'sponsors of terror'

Thousands of illegal aliens apprehended along the 2,000 mile border stretching through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas aren't even from Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol calls them "Other Than Mexicans," or OTMs, and many are citizens of countries that are sponsors of terrorism.

Is the American Southwest about to be lost? Read about the realities, in "Conquest of Aztlan"

A 2006 congressional report on border threats, titled "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border" and prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of those were from countries other than Mexico. Approximately 650 were from "special interest countries," or nations the Border Patrol defines as "designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism."


Illegal aliens from Central America ride atop a freight train leaving Arriaga, Mexico, en route to the U.S. (photo: Hogar de la Misericordia, or Home of Mercy)

Atlanta's WSB-TV2 aired a segment on U.S. border security after it obtained records from a federal detention center near Phoenix, Ariz., and found current listings for illegal aliens from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen.

"We have left the back door to the United States open," former Rep. J.D. Hayworth told the station. "We have to understand that there are definitely people who mean to do us harm who have crossed that border."

WSB-TV 2 published a population breakdown from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement staging facility in Florence, Ariz., dated April 15, 2010, which includes detainees from as far away as Afghanistan, Armenia, Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Botswana, Turkey and many other countries.

Based on U.S. Border Patrol statistics, there were 30,147 OTMs apprehended in fiscal year 2003; 44, 614 in fiscal year 2004; 165,178 in fiscal year 2005; and 108,025 in fiscal year 2006. Most were caught along the U.S. Southwest border.

According to the Department of Homeland Security's 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Studies, from the Office of Immigration Statistics, federal law enforcement agencies detained 791,568 deportable aliens in fiscal year 2008 – and 5,506 of them were from 14 "special-interest countries."

The State Department lists the following as "special-interest countries": Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

The following "special-interest countries" are listed as sponsors of terror: Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran.

The aliens were apprehended "at the borders of the United States, in the interior of the country and at designated sites outside of the United States." The 2008 yearbook lists 791,568 deportable aliens by country (Page 97). Some include:

Afghanistan: 29
Algeria: 41
Cuba: 3,896
Iran: 98
Iraq: 118
Lebanon: 188
Libya: 11
Nigeria: 299
Pakistan: 494
Saudi Arabia: 71
Somalia: 66
Sudan: 46
Syria: 71
Yemen: 78

According to the Government Accountability Office, "The Border Patrol reported that in fiscal year 2008, checkpoints encountered 530 aliens from special-interest countries."

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'Ever-present threat of terrorist infiltration'

Warning of an "ever-present threat of terrorist infiltration over the Southwest border," the congressional report notes:

  • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations have revealed that aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States.
  • Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.
  • U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country.

The Texas border – specifically the McAllen area – outpaces the rest of the nation in OTMs and aliens from "special-interest countries."

From Sept. 11, 2001, to 2006, the Department of Homeland Security reported a 41 percent increase in arrests along the Texas/Mexico border of "special-interest aliens" – including aliens from Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, China, Russia, Yemen, Albania, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan – all apprehended in the South Texas region alone.

U.S. immigration authorities have discovered items along the banks of the Rio Grande River that suggest ties to terrorist organizations. In 2006, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County, Texas, reported that officials found Iranian currency in the same area.

Also, a jacket found in Jim Hogg County, Texas, was covered in patches from countries where al-Qaida is known to operate. The patches include an Arabic military badge and one that illustrates an airplane flying into a tower. Another one features a depiction of a lion's head with wings and a parachute. The Arab insignia reads "martyr," "way to eternal life" or "way to immortality."


Patches found along Texas-Mexico border. Patch with Arab insignia on left reads "martyr," "way to enternal life" or "way to immortality." Badge on right features illustration of airplane about to collide with a tower. (photos from 2006 congressional report)

'One way or another, they're all connected'

"Islamic radical groups that support Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamiya Al Gamat are all active in Latin America," the 2006 congressional report states. "These groups generate funds through money laundering, drug trafficking and arms deals, making millions of dollars every year via their multiple illicit activities. These cells reach back to the Middle East and extend to this hemisphere the sophisticates global support structure of international terrorism."

In May 2001, just months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a former Mexican national security adviser and U.N. ambassador, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, warned, "Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge."

The 39-page report notes members of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization, have already entered the U.S. by way of the Southwest border.

In 2002, authorities arrested Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a café owner in Tijuana, Mexico, for smuggling more than 200 Lebanese people into the U.S., including several believed to have ties to Hezbollah.

Also, in March 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, an illegal alien who had been smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border after bribing a Mexican consular official in Beirut for a visa, pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah. Kourani, brother of the Hezbollah chief of military operations in southern Lebanon, lived in Dearborn, Mich., while he solicited funds for Hezbollah terrorists.

Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," Michael Braun, retired assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told the Washington Times last year. "They work together. They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected. "

He added, "They'll leverage those relationships to their benefit, to smuggle contraband and humans into the U.S.; in fact, they already are [smuggling]."

In 2006, Colombia's acting attorney general, Jorge Armando Otalora, announced authorities had dismantled a ring that had been producing fake passports to help illegal aliens enter the United States. Colombian officials said the gang was tied to al-Qaida and Hamas militants and that it had supplied the false passports to citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries. However, the U.S. Justice Department denied those allegations, saying the gang had connections to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said, "We are not alleging any connections to any terror organization other than the FARC."

As WND reported in 2007, President Bush's top intelligence aide confirmed that Iraqi terrorists were captured coming into the United States from Mexico.

Just this week, Houston's KHOU-TV 11 reported Homeland Security warned Houston, Texas, police and Harris County Sheriff's deputies that a suspected terrorist may be traveling through the U.S. through Mexico. Mohamed Ali is a suspected member of the terrorist group Al Shabaab, a group based in Somalia with ties to the Somali attacks portrayed in the movie "Blackhawk Down."

Only months ago, Al Shabaab announced its allegiance to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

KHOU-TV's chilling report can be seen below:

Likewise, the station reported, a federal indictment was filed in San Antonio against a Somali man two weeks ago. It alleges Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane led a "large-scale smuggling enterprise," moving east Africans into the U.S., including members of a terrorist group called AIAI. Dhakane is also suspected of recruiting people to help create a Taliban regime.

Shocking likelihood of terrorist infiltration

A 2009 academic study by the Society for Risk Analysis, titled "Analyzing the Homeland Security of the U.S.-Mexico Border," used a mathematical model to predict the likelihood of terrorist infiltration across the border with Mexico.

Two researcher from Stanford University and a third from George Mason University concluded that chances of OTM terrorists entering the U.S. across the southern border are quite high.

According to one calculation, based on assumptions about the extent of border screening and other aspects of domestic interior enforcement, the probability of an OTM terrorist crossing into the United States was 97.3 percent.

A 2005 Congressional Research Service report for Congress warned, "Terrorists and terrorist organizations could leverage these illicit networks to smuggle a person or weapon of mass destruction into the United States, while the large number of aliens attempting to enter the country illegally could potentially provide cover for the terrorists."

Aliens from the Middle East and other parts of the globe are said to travel to South America first, where they learn to speak Spanish. Then they continue up through Mexico and join other illegal aliens as they cross the border – mostly undetected.

According to the 2006 congressional report, federal law-enforcement agencies estimate that only 10 to 30 percent of illegal aliens are actually caught – meaning an estimated 70 to 90 percent enter the U.S. undetected.

"While many illegal aliens cross the border searching for employment, not all illegal aliens are crossing into the United States to find work," the report states. "Law enforcement has stated that some individuals come across the border because they have been forced to leave their home countries due to their criminal activity. These dangerous criminals are fleeing the law in other countries and seeking refuge in the United States."


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Previous stories:

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Their coming to take another right away-Feds: States' growing gun-rights movement a threat


Handguns from Freedom Arms in Wyoming

Another Obama promise broken, gun control is coming. It's America's fault that the drug gangs in Mexico are buying guns,and shoulder fired missiles. You second amendment rights have to go, so Obama can protect the rest of the world!

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

The federal government is arguing in a gun-rights case pending in federal court in Montana that state plans to exempt in-state guns from various federal requirements themselves make the laws void, because the growing movement certainly would impact "interstate commerce."

The government continues to argue to the court that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution should be the guiding rule for the coming decision. The argument plays down the significance of both the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the 10th Amendment provision that reserves to states all prerogatives not specifically granted the federal government in the Constitution.

WND has reported both on the lawsuit filed by Montana interests seeking affirmation of the 2009 Montana Firearms Freedom Act as well as the growing movement that has seen six other states, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee and Arizona, follow with similar laws.

Here are answers to all your questions about guns, ammunition and accessories.

The movement worries the federal government. In a brief filed this week in support of government demands that the case be dismissed, posted on the website for the Firearms Freedom Act, attorneys wrote, "Because an illicit market for firearms exists nationwide, a 'gaping hole' in federal firearm regulation would persist if firearms made and sold in Montana were exempted from compliance."

(Story continues below)





The brief continued, "Moreover, six states have followed Montana's lead in enacting 'virtually identical' Firearms Freedom Acts, and an additional 22 have proposed similar legislation. … The fact that up to 29 states may essentially 'opt out' of certain federal firearms laws would have an indisputable effect on interstate commerce."

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit previously argued that the Commerce Clause, in the original Constitution, later was modified by both the Second Amendment and 10th Amendment.

In a brief submitted on behalf of Montana lawmakers who wrote and adopted the law, attorneys argued that the state law simply allows Montana citizens to "engage within their state in constitutionally protected activity without burdensome federal oversight."

"It is questionable whether Congress' authority under its conditional spending power or its power to regulate interstate commerce extends to MFFA firearms," the argument continued.

"Where a power had not been granted exclusively to the national government or, where generally granted, had not been exercised … the states retain freedom to legislate," the lawmakers argued.


Montana statehouse

"There is nothing in the MFFA that should offend the powers of the national government," they said. And the lawmakers argued that the Constitution's supremacy clause has no impact because "only laws made in pursuance of the Constitution constitute the supreme law of the land."

In this case, the state is addressing intrastate commerce under its authority under the Second and Tenth Amendments, the brief argued.

Not so, said the feds.

Not only do the plaintiffs lack standing to bring the case, Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce is extended to anything that affects interstate commerce – including intrastate actions and the federal action to strike down the Montana law doesn't violate any constitutional provisions, the government brief argues.

"Congress also may 'regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce,'" the government argues. "Here, Congress has rationally concluded that the manufacture and sale of firearms, a highly regulated commodity, substantially affects commerce."

"While the MFFA may only apply to guns made and sold in Montana, it is unreasonable to expect that these firearms will not leave the state," the brief continues.

The government argues that not even the Second Amendment supports the idea of state-regulated firearms rather than federal regulations.

"It is important to note that Heller [a Supreme Court decision affirming the individual right to bear arms] did nothing to disturb prior holdings refusing to extend Second Amendment protection to firearm manufacturers."

A separate brief also was filed in support of striking down the Montana law by lawyers on behalf of the Brady Center to Prevent Violence, International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association, National Black Police Association and several others, drawing a sort of rebuke from the judge in the case.

He noted that only the Brady Center had been authorized to file the friend-of-the-court brief so the other organizations cited would not be recognized.

Montana's plan is called "An Act exempting from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured and retained in Montana."

The law cites the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time it was admitted to statehood in 1889.

Lawmakers in Montana actually took the dispute to the feds. They argued, "Should Congress enact a law that appears to conflict with the guidance in the [Montana Firearms Freedom Act], the courts may then determine whether Congress has acted within the scope of its delegated powers as limited by later amendments. … The courts may then determine the extent to which Congress' enactment has abrogated the state's exercise of power within the same sphere."

The lawsuit was brought against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Montana Shooting Sports Association in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.

It seeks a declaration that the federal government must stay out of the way of Montana's management of its own firearms.

According to the Firearms Freedom Act website, such laws are "primarily a Tenth Amendment challenge to the powers of Congress under the 'commerce clause,' with firearms as the object – it is a states' rights exercise."

When South Dakota's law was signed by Gov. Mike Rounds, a commentator said it addresses the "rights of states which have been carelessly trampled by the federal government for decades."

Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center said Washington likely is looking for a way out of the dispute.

"I think they're going to let it ride, hoping some judge throws out the case," he told WND earlier. "When they really start paying attention is when people actually start following the [state] firearms laws."

WND reported when Wyoming joined the states with self-declared exemptions from federal gun regulation. Officials there took the unusual step of including penalties for any agent of the U.S. who "enforces or attempts to enforce" federal gun rules on a "personal firearm."

The costs could be up to two years in prison and $2,000 in fines for an offender.


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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Soros-funded group urges media run by government Marxist-led study has close ties to Obama White House officials

Posted: May 19, 2010
9:58 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily


Free Press founder Robert W. McChesney

NEW YORK – A George Soros-funded, Marxist-founded organization calling itself Free Press has published a study advocating the development of a "world class" government-run media system in the U.S.

A newly released book, meanwhile, documents Free Press has close ties to top Obama administration officials.

"The need has never been greater for a world-class public media system in America," begins a 48-page document, "New Public Media: A Plan for Action," by the far-left Free Press organization.

"Commercial media's economic tailspin has pushed public media to the center of the debate over the future of journalism and the media, presenting the greatest opportunity yet to reinvigorate and re-envision the modern U.S. public media system," argued the Free Press document, which was reviewed by WND.

The hot new best-seller, "The Manchurian President," by Aaron Klein reveals the inside story on Team Obama and its members. Now available autographed at WND's Superstore!

The Free Press study urges the creation of a trust fund – largely supported by new fees and taxes on advertising and the private media – to jump start the founding of a massive government-run public media system that will ultimately become self-sufficient.

(Story continues below)



"We believe local news reporting should become one of public media's top priorities," said Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron, one of the paper's co-authors.

"We should redeploy and redouble our resources to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans can't follow closely on their own," Aaron stated.

Free Press is a well-known advocate of government intervention in the Internet.

Avowed Marxist

A new book, "The Manchurian President," documents the founder of the Free Press, Robert W. McChesney, is an avowed Marxist who has recommended capitalism be dismantled.

The book, subtitled "Barack Obama's ties to communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists," also documents the close ties between Free Press and leading Obama administration officials. The new work was written by WND senior reporter Aaron Klein and co-author Brenda J. Elliott.

McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.

In February 2009, McChesney recommended capitalism be dismantled.

"In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,'" wrote McChesney in a column.

The board of Free Press has included a slew of radicals, such as Obama's former "green jobs" czar" Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he founded a communist organization.

Obama's "Internet czar," Susan P. Crawford, spoke at a Free Press's May 14, 2009, "Changing Media" summit in Washington, D.C, revealed "The Manchurian President" book.

"Manchurian" shows Crawford's pet project, OneWebNow, lists as "participating organizations" Free Press and the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-directed the Obama transition team's Federal Communications Commission Review team, are advisory board members at Public Knowledge, a George Soros-funded public interest group.

A Public Knowledge advisory board member is Timothy Wu, who is also chairman of the board for Free Press.

Like Public Knowledge, Free Press also has received funds from Soros' Open Society Institute.

Issues of restrictions on speech are not limited to Crawford.

WND previously reported Obama's "regulatory" czar, Cass Sunstein drew up a "First Amendment New Deal" – a new "Fairness Doctrine" that would include the establishment of a panel of "nonpartisan experts" to ensure "diversity of view" on the airwaves.

WND also reported that in a recently released book, "On Rumors," Sunstein argued websites should be obliged to remove "false rumors" while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such "rumors."

In the 2009 book, Sunstein cited as a primary example of "absurd" and "hateful" remarks, reports by "right-wing websites" alleging an association between President Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

Sunstein also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for "attacking" Obama regarding the president's "alleged associations."

Ayers became a name in the 2008 presidential campaign when it was disclosed he worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers' apartment.

Meanwhile, in a lengthy academic paper, Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing," WND reported.

Among the examples of speech that should be banned, Sunstein offered, is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.

Sunstein also recommended the government send agents to infiltrate "extremists who supply conspiracy theories" and disrupt the efforts of the "extremists" to propagate their theories.

Earlier this week, a video at Breitbart.com showed Sunstein proposing Congress hold hearings about mandates to ensure websites post links to a diversity of views on issues.

"The Manchurian President," meanwhile, which just hit the New York Times best-seller list, alleges Obama has deep ties to an extremist nexus that has been instrumental not only in building his political career but in crafting current White House policy.

With almost 900 citations, "The Manchurian President" bills itself as the most exhaustive investigation ever performed into Obama's political background and radical ties.

Klein began investigating Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and broke major national stories. He first exposed the politician's association with Ayers in a widely circulated WND article.

The story prompted the Nation magazine to lament, via the CBS News website, that "mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's articles."

It was in a WABC Radio interview with Klein that Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to Hamas, "endorsed" Obama for president, generating world headlines and sparking controversy. Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and Obama repeatedly traded public barbs over Hamas' positive comments.

Klein was among the first reporters to expose that Obama's "green jobs" czar, Van Jones, founded a communist organization and called for "resistance" against the U.S. government. The theme was picked up and expanded upon by the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck, leading to Jones' resignation last September.

Elliott, meanwhile, is a historian, author and investigative researcher known for her blogging during the 2008 presidential election about William Ayers, Tony Rezko and other controversial figures linked to Obama.


Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, mused about various aspects before leaving office next

After eight years in office, Lula said: “A head of state is not a person, an institution, (…) he has to carry out the agreements that are possible. I’ve learned that in power and I think has been good for Brazil. “

He further expressed that it is unacceptable that a president has a certain inclination with others with their own ideological bent: “I get along with Aznar and Zapatero, I have to relate to Pinera in Chile like I did with Bachelet. The exercise of power, I am a citizen, how can I say…? Multinational, multi-ideological, right? “.

He described the situation when he was elected Brazilian president: “The country had no credit, had no working capital or financing or income distribution. What kind of capitalism was that? A capitalism without capital. I decided then that it was necessary to first build capitalism, then make socialism, we must have something to distribute before doing so. “

In this vein, the president added that “if the country does not have anything, there is nothing to distribute, and employers need to know that they have to pay slightly higher wages so that people can buy the products they manufacture. Henry Ford already has said this in 1912. “

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Thanks to US-Intel briefs: Bull's-eye put on Israel's nukes Arab interests want IAEA review of program

Posted: May 17, 2010
7:59 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily



The Dimona site in Israel

In an unprecedented move, the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled next month to take up the issue of Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal, an action which it never before has done, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The IAEA June 7 board meeting reportedly lists "Israeli nuclear capabilities" as the eighth agenda item. The item reportedly was added at the request of Arab interests.

In an April 23 letter to the IAEA, the 18 Arab national members of the nuclear oversight group urged IAEA chief Yukiya Amano to enforce a resolution calling on Israel to allow IAEA inspection of its nuclear facilities.

(Story continues below)



Israel has refused to do so.

The agenda item, however, could be removed if the U.S. and other countries mount strong opposition to it.

If the item remains on the agenda, it could deflect attention from the topic of Iran's nuclear enrichment efforts and Tehran's refusal until now to adhere to numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions calling on Iran to halt its nuclear program. If the item is removed from the IAEA agenda, it could encourage other Arab countries to undertake a nuclear initiative, making it impossible to achieve a nuclear-free Middle East, which already may be too late due to Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal.

For the rest of this report, and the full reports on the following topics, go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The War on Terror Is Over We Lost-Pakistan moving away from war on terror Strategy shows Muslims lack spirit to fight co-religionists

Posted: May 18, 2010
10:13 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.


Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

While a number of sources have documented the threat to the very existence of the government in Pakistan from its own resident Islamists, a recent military exercise there pointed toward India as the nation's main threat, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The exercise indicates little worry on the part of the Pakistani army over the possible actions of the Muslim radicals – created by Pakistan's government to pursue its Islamist agenda in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

And that should alarm Washington regarding the commitment by the Pakistani army's high command to fight the radical Islamists who are launching attacks against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

(Story continues below)



The key to such a direction is Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the highly regarded commander of the Pakistani army who once headed Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.

It was the ISI that originally created such insurgent groups as the Afghan Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT, and the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which is linked to the car bomb attempt in New York City's Times Square on May 2.

As leader of the Pakistani army, Kayani is very aware of the impact on morale of the Pakistani soldiers when they are called on to fight their Muslim co-religionists in what has been dubbed "America's War."

In a recent meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, for example, Kayani reportedly had expressed his reservations over the army's role in fighting the Taliban militants.

Obama -The federal government is financially supporting and officially embracing a radical mosque in the Washington suburbs that is directly connected

Posted: May 18, 2010
9:40 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

WASHINGTON – The federal government is financially supporting and officially embracing a radical mosque in the Washington suburbs that is directly connected to al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks as well as other terrorism.

The Census Bureau has signed a two-year, $582,000 lease with Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, where top al-Qaida recruiter Anwar Awlaki ministered to the Pentagon hijackers and the Fort Hood terrorist as a mosque leader.

Meanwhile, the State Department is taking diplomatic trainees on tours of the large Falls Church, Va., mosque, while featuring it in a video as a model depiction of Islam in America – even as the Department of Homeland Security warns that it is a terrorist front.

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According to recently declassified internal reports obtained by the respected Investigative Project on Terrorism, Homeland Security has warned federal agents that Dar al-Hijrah is "operating as a front for Hamas" and "has been under numerous investigations for financing and proving (sic) aid and comfort to bad orgs and members."

WND has learned authorities are also investigating the mosque for child molestation and credit card fraud, following reports of mysterious Dar al-Hijrah line-item charges appearing on the statements of local individuals not even connected to the mosque.

Republican U.S. Rep. John Carter, whose Texas district includes Fort Hood, has demanded the government sever its lease, citing the threat Dar al-Hijrah poses to homeland security.

"The purpose for creating this cabinet-level agency (Homeland Security) in 2002 was to coordinate all agencies of the federal government to prevent any more radical Islamic attacks like 9-11," Carter said. "Eight years later and they can't even tell a federal agency they're renting office space from the very mosque involved with the 9-11 attacks, and that has seeded this past year's assaults through the likes of Awlaki."

General Services Administration, which holds the keys to federal buildings and coordinates security with Homeland Security, rented off-site office space owned by the mosque for census workers. GSA did not return calls seeking comment.

Dar al-Hijrah – known as the "Row Street mosque" by local law enforcement – was home for two years to Anwar Awlaki (a.k.a. Aulaqi), the charismatic, American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, who radicalized Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Christmas Day crotch-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and, most recently, Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.

"Awlaki not only led prayers at Dar al-Hijrah, he lived there," listing the Row Street address as his residence, said terror expert Paul Sperry.

He says Awlaki fled the country in late 2002 after narrowly escaping arrest on a federal warrant. Citing classified intelligence reports first documented in his book, "Infiltration," Sperry says the Muslim preacher showed up on terror watchlists as the subject of multiple federal investigations.

(Story continues below)



CIA-operated drones reportedly have now targeted Awlaki for assassination, and are hunting for him in a remote mountainous region of Yemen.

The State Department says Dar al-Hijrah was chosen as a training center for diplomats working in Arab countries because it is a large mosque that is conveniently located for them. A State Department video showcases the mosque and depicts its congregants as diverse and patriotic, while ignoring the mosque's record of extremist statements and ties to terrorist groups.

"With the controversy surrounding Dar al-Hijrah now, I wouldn't want to send the message to the world that this is Islam in America," said Hedieh Mirahmadi, a Sufi Muslim who combats radical Islamist ideology as president of the World Organization for Resource Development & Education in Washington.

While Dar al-Hijrah now publicly disavows Awlaki, whom it hired as its lead imam before 9/11, its leadership is still closely tied to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that counts Awlaki as a member in good standing. The mosque is affiliated with the Muslim American Society, or MAS, a group formed as "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States."

Former MAS President Esam Omeish served on the mosque's board of directors. Omeish had to resign from a Virginia immigration board in 2007 after he was caught on videotape praising Palestinians who chose "the jihad way" to liberation.

Dar al-Hijrah's current imam, Shaker Elsayed, is a former MAS secretary-general. In a 2004 profile on the Muslim Brotherhood in America, Elsayed praised Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna, saying his ideas are "the closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life."

The late Al-Banna preached that "jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim," and praised "martyrs" who die fighting infidels in the cause of Allah.

Elsayed himself has said that Muslims have the right to use violence: "We do have license to respond with all force necessary to our attackers."

Another cleric at the mosque, associate imam Johari Abdul Malik, has preached to American Muslims that they are within Islamic law to "blow up bridges" and other infrastructure. "You can do all forms of sabotage," he said in a 2001 Hamas conference.

Al-Banna also taught that "Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments anywhere which are opposed to this ideology and program of Islam. Islam requires the earth – not just a portion, but the entire planet."

Malik, likewise, has called for Islamic supremacy in America.

"We will see the day when Islam, by the grace of Allah, will become the dominant way of life," Malik told his flock in 2004. "You will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America to being the first religion in America."

Federal investigators say Dar al-Hijrah is a dangerous breeding ground for known terrorists, including:

  • Fugitive Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, a former mosque leader.
  • Ismail Elbarasse, a founding mosque member, Saudi government employee, and Muslim Brotherhood leader who was arrested for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bay bridge for attack.
  • Abdelhaleem Ashqar, mosque leader and suspected Hamas operative recently convicted for obstruction of justice.
  • Mohammed al-Hanooti, a longtime mosque leader and unindicted co-conspirator in both the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and recent Holy Land Foundation terror finance case.
  • Top al-Qaida fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving 23 years in federal prison for terrorism. Alamoudi's brothers live in Saudi.
  • Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the would-be al-Qaida presidential assassin whose father worked for the Saudi Embassy.
  • Abdullah bin Laden, Saudi nephew of the al-Qaida kingpin whose name appears on the federal terrorist watchlist.
  • Maj. Hasan, accused of murdering 13 and injuring 30 others in a jihad-inspired shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas.
  • Hani Hanjour, 9/11 hijacker and Saudi national who flew the jumbo jet into the Pentagon.
  • Nawaf al-Hazmi, 9/11 hijacker and Saudi national who joined Hanjour on the Pentagon flight and acted as second in command of the entire al-Qaida operation behind hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta.

The mosque, in fact, helped Hanjour and al-Hazmi obtain housing in the area.

After 9/11, investigators found the phone number for Dar al-Hijrah in the Hamburg, Germany, apartment of one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks – Ramzi Binalshibh, now a Gitmo detainee.

Constructed with $5 million from the Saudi Embassy, Dar al-Hijrah is "a terror mill and a direct threat to national security," asserts Sperry. So why is the controversial mosque still open? "It enjoys a high level of political protection," he says.

Once a month, Elsayed meets with top officials with the Saudi-funded Council on American-Islamic Relations on the first floor of its Washington headquarters, Sperry notes his new book, "Muslim Mafia." Also attending the monthly breakfasts: Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., Congress's first Muslim member.

CAIR is Dar al-Hijrah's top defender in Washington, and routinely runs interference between law enforcement and the mosque, Sperry says. (CAIR, which operates a booth at Dar al-Hijrah, even pressured sneaker maker Nike to build a playground at the mosque.) Dar al-Hijrah, in turns, attends CAIR's annual fundraising dinners and is a major supporter of the nonprofit group.

The Justice Department says CAIR, like Dar al-Hijrah, also is a terrorist front group for Hamas and its parent the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR in 2007 was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal scheme to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas suicide bombers and their families, prompting the FBI to cut off all outreach to the group. A federal grand jury in Washington is actively investigating CAIR and its ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Malik, who also acts as the mosque's official spokesman, is a close friend of Awlaki, who privately ministered to the Saudi hijackers. After the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki fled to London, where he gave a sermon extolling the virtues of martyrdom.

In an interview with author Sperry, Malik defended his friend's sermon, arguing Muslims who die while fighting unbelievers in the cause of Allah are no different from U.S. Marines fighting and dying for America in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"That's the same thing as telling Marines in this country semper fidelis," Malik told Sperry. "Telling people to give their all for their faith is not an unusual idea."

His mosque handled the funeral services of Maj. Hasan's mother when she passed away in 2001. It was then that Hasan first fell under the spell of the al-Qaida cleric Awlaki, who corresponded with Hasan in some 20 emails in the months leading up to Hasan's alleged massacre. Awlaki praised Hasan as "a hero" and blessed the attack on U.S. soldiers as a legitimate form of jihad.

One of al-Qaida's top Western recruiters, Awlaki is considered a rock star among jihadists, and has cultivated fans among CAIR officials.

For example, CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper's protege Ismail Royer and his terrorist cell chauffeured Awlaki around Washington in October 2002, as he looked for new terrorist recruits, according to Sperry. Prosecutors also found Awlaki's phone number stored on their cell phones.

Royer, who was personally recruited by Hooper and worked under him at CAIR's headquarters, is serving 20 years in federal prison. Internal CAIR memos show Hooper is heading his appeal effort within CAIR.